“The Wellington Boot Up Files” by Peter Read

Peter Read, a founding member of infamous (and great) Sydney band THUG (with Tex Perkins and Lachlan McLeod), also Moist (with Patrick Kavanagh and Ralph Philips), a some time member of Lubricated Goat, Leather Moustache and sound person for the early Kim Salmon & The Surrealists, Dirty Three, Toys Went Berserk and many more.
Read formed Thug with Perkins and McLeod in 1987 and swiftly earned a reputation for frenetic, visceral and challenging live shows that would often transcend the typical hallmarks of a live music gig to include dancers, theatrics and other visual elements alongside their hypnotic tunes. Their abrasive and downright fucking weird track Fuck Your Dad (also known simply as Dad) — their debut single, released as a 7″ along with eponymous track Thug — set the scene for an explosive and implosive tenure that, along with their contemporaries in bands such as Lubricated Goat (who Read even joined for a spell) and Kim Salmon & The Surrealists, helped cement Australia’s burgeoning reputation for incubating vital and incendiary indie acts.
Read’s stint with Thug yielded two albums — 1987’s Mechanical Ape/Proud Idiots Parade and 1988 follow-up Electric Woolly Mammoth; both albums saw a little-publicised collective re-release on CD in 1999, under the grammatically questionable title, Everything Is Beautiful In It’s Own Way.
Peter released a CD in 2004 titled ‘Chimp Inc’ through Smelly Records. In 2007 he released ‘Plumbing the Underbelly’ as “Spiney Fleshpot”, a collaboration with Patrick Kavanagh through CanaWorms Records, then in 2008 he released his solo CD, ‘The Wellington Boot Up Files’, also on Canaworms Records.